Month: February 2012

I lay in t’pit watching Leveson yesterday and marvelled as “Sue Akers, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, told the Leveson inquiry into press standards there had been “multiple payments” by the Sun to public officials of thousands of pounds….”

The Guardian has the story. David Allen Green asked if Tom Watson MP had gone too far some months ago by using the ‘Mafia’ metaphor in relation to News International when he questioned James Murdoch.

“The House of Commons starts its proceedings with a prayer. The chaplain looks at the assembled members with their varied intelligence and then prays for the country.”Lord Denning

WEEKLY LAW REVIEW PART II

With ‘militant secularism’ in the news (whatever ‘militant secularism’ means), unelected Bishops being difficult in the Lords, rebellion from some Christians to the idea of women bishops (ironic, given that The Queen is head of The Church of England and Defender of The Faith) and judges declaring prayers at Council meetings unlawful – an atheist may wonder, possibly even marvel, that religion plays, still, so important a role in the governance of our country; be it explicit, ritualistic, atavistic or subtle.

Add to this the many other gods supported by the peoples of our country and the complications, conflicts and prejudices inherent in balancing the many faith agendas and interests; we have a cauldron of chaos ahead, arguably, if we do not separate religions from State, from governance and The Rule of Law?

I simply pose the question, while still thinking about the answer… and on that note…. to Part II of my weekly law review this week. [Part I is here and below]

A trainee at Shearman & Sterling is cringing under his desk after an email he sent from his work address ended up in the Sun, the Mirror, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. Ouch.

The trainee’s email described his plans for a forthcoming rugby tour. Which included chanting about how rich he is and photographing “spit-roasts”. He sent the email to a friend at another law firm and, predictably, it then winged its way around the City. It reached RollOnFriday by Wednesday, and by Thursday morning the story was all over the national newspapers.

I am untroubled by Aldridge’s view of me. I am a firm believer in free speech and…. after all, a contributor to The Grauniad (Aldridge no longer describes himself as a Guardian ‘columnist’ on his twitter bio after The Guardian asked him not to) has to establish a reputation for ‘cred’ somehow.

And let’s go for a hat trick of good reads (not that the blog posts which I refer to below are not good reads… they are… but Carl Gardner, on his Head of Legal blog, writes: Supreme Court judgment: Sugar v BBC

Having seen off God, Professor Dawkins turns his attention to another object of veneration, the jury, in the The New Statesman. He thinks that the requirement, as he sees it, of proof ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ for guilty verdicts, is at odds with what juries actually do when deliberating. The high standard of proof should leave no room for discussion, or for the forceful intervention of unusually persuasive jury members. Cases should speak for themselves…..

Professor John Flood says in a post – The Way of the World…. “I want to take several disconnected events to show that the legal services world is really undergoing volcanic eruptions.”

The changing legal landscape is fascinating. “ABS and disruptives” are on the agenda for the Without Prejudice podcast tonight. Cat Griffiths, Editor of The Lawyer, will be shedding some light on this.

“We’re in the middle of a small orgy of kneejerk (or jerk-kneeing, if you prefer) bashing of bankers with self-inflated banker-bonkers, and not a few people trying to keep the ball rolling because it is convenient for their politics. But it seems to me that some of the basic indicators on the Economy are beginning to return from extreme values to something a little closer to ‘normal’. I’m not saying it’s all fixed, but the Gordonion Knot starting to loosen itself?”

“Now for years, the Bank of England has been telling us that we are in a deflationary period where we need low interest rates and ultra easy monetary policy. This has been the case since at least 2008 – so getting on for four full years now….”

I am starting my ‘Podcast With A Practitioner’ series as part of the weekly review next week to see what lawyers at the coal face think of the legal landscape. As Prime Minister Camcorderdirect has got into ‘binge drinking’ for his latest ‘Big Society’ intervention in our lives… I thought it was appropriate to dredge up my “DRINKING FORECAST” from 2010…. complete with Sailing By and North Utsire…

The Lawyer: Brand new bromantics – Two big beasts, a whole bunch of questions. When The Lawyer broke the story of Tony Angel joining DLA Piper last year, one question everyone asked was how he would get on with Nigel Knowles.

The weekly review will develop and in weeks to come will include news on the latest law books, comment on important cases and a section on the human condition. But… I have to see a man about a dog and prepare for the Without Prejudice podcast tonight – so that’s it for this week.

MP faces charges over Nazi stag night

“I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.”Groucho Marx

In the seven or so years I have been blogging, since July 2006 on WordPress, I have read many law blogs from this country, the United States, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. Some have disappeared, others have survived. Twitter has come along in the last few years, transferring comment on topical issues to some extent from the blogs to the short form 140 character medium of twitter. Some blog for pleasure, others to provide a detailed resource on specialist areas of law, some to analyse and dissect a broader range of legal issues , some to market their firm or practice and a few to rant or take the piss. Legal blogging is a broad church with many aims. (Scots solicitor Brian Inkster, writing on The Time Blawg, considered The Elephant in the #LawBlogs Room and generated 76 comments, some rather terse and blunt.)

Before I continue with this first of my weekly reviews, I urge you to watch a short film where US lawyers Kevin O’Keefe and Scott Greenfield discuss blogging, twitter and social media and the potential for the dark side to prevail. (On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog)

Sadly, Scott Greenfield, a criminal defense lawyer in New York and author of the excellent Simple Justice blog, has hung up his keyboard.

And with that, just one final comment: I suspect that Leveson LJ will find it difficult to formulate regulation for bloggers should he be minded to recommend a state based regulatory system for the press and other media. As we discussed in last week’s Without Prejudice podcast – the existing law may well be sufficient to regulate bloggers?

Professional update from The Law Society

Advocacy section launch event
Why is good quality advocacy in the courts so important and what training and support is available? Hear the views of the lord chief justice, the chief operating officer of the Crown Prosecution Service and the chair of the Solicitors’ Association of Higher Court Advocates.Listen to the launch event podcast – you’ll need to register at our CPD centre websiteAdvocacy Section application details

Applications invited for specialist regulatory advocates
The Health and Safety Executive, Environment Agency and Office of Rail Regulation are looking to appoint a list of advocates to conduct their higher court prosecution work and other regulatory advocacy.Application details – deadline: 12 March

“After 27 years in legal practice, I’m finding it difficult to find new opportunities to explore and I miss the camaraderie of the office. My social life, which used to be inextricably linked to my practice, is practically non-existent. For an energetic 54-year-old, the prospect of spending your retirement at home is difficult to imagine.”

“Legal education is not the handmaiden of the profession but there is a great deal to be gained from a more mature relationship with it.”
Professor Richard Moorhead

In a changing legal landscape where law firms are facing competition and opportunities from the corporate sector, there are concerns that law schools will come under pressure to reduce the length of degree programmes and focus more on the needs of legal practice. Professor Richard Moorhead asks: Do Lawyers Need Scholars?.

I share the concern of some in legal education that there is a danger of law degree programmes being dumbed down, perhaps even shortened from three to two years with a concomitant reduction in content and thinking time. Professor Moorhead’s article provides food for thought.

University student fee rises in the public sector an issue? BPP launches a May start degree course in law for £3225

BPP University College has announced that it is offering places at its centres across the UK to start a degree in May 2012 on its accountancy, business and law programmes. The fees are set at £3,225 per year – whether studying in two or three years – enabling more students to study professional, career focused degrees before the September 2012 fee increases.

Carl Lygo, Chief Executive of BPP University College, said:

“One of the reasons we are offering May start degrees is to provide a service for a neglected section of the education and training space – the adult worker. The recent UCAS application figures showed the number of mature students appears to be falling in the wake of the 2012 fee hikes. Hopefully, our May start programmes will show there are alternatives for those looking to switch careers and get a degree before they’re financially out of reach. Mature students typically prefer to live at home and commute rather than moving into halls in far flung campuses, so by offering our degrees out of city centre locations we can make it easier for them to access and fit study around any part-time work commitments.”

BPP enjoys a good reputation in the market for vocational accountancy and law courses and while it will take them time to build a reputation to compete with the Russell Group universities on law degree level programmes, this initiative will start them on the road to doing so. As with The College of Law and Kaplan, also run on private sector lines, BPP is very well resourced with a strong business management ethic. It will not take any of the private providers long at degree level to match the quality of provision of the established universities in law – and, it would not surprise me if they overtake many universities in terms of the quality of teaching and resources. Research, of course, is another matter – but in time?

The very aggressive competition on fees – £3225 against a possible £9000 per annum for top public sector law courses – provides a very attractive option for students concerned about the rising costs of legal education. If BPP can sustain the fee differential at the present ratio and develop reputation in the legal market for their degrees – it will put traditional universities under considerable pressure in the future.

PART II FOLLOWS TOMORROW

I think it best, given the length of the reviews, to split my weekly law review into two sections each week for ease of reading and digestion – Part I on Wednesdays and Part II on Thursdays.

In Part II – Commentary on new cases – Law Blogs Roundup – Podcast with a practitioner – Finance and Taxation news for lawyers – Arts and… The Human Condition.

“We believe that our new creation will transform the way legal services are delivered in the United Kingdom. We believe that we have addressed the all too common perception by the public that legal services are expensive and service levels are variable, at times heading towards incompetent. Lawyerborg 2.0 comes fully equipped with leading legal databases built in and while taking on a recognisable human form and similar empathy levels found in fully human lawyers, Lawyerborg 2.0 is at the cutting edge of the dawn of alternative business structures ‘envisioned’ in the Legal Services Act. We have accepted the impossible mission to drive down the costs of provision of legal services but retaining high revenues and, even more important, stellar profits. Lawyerborg 2.0 is virtually maintenance free and will bill 24/7/365.

“In light of the technology infuse world where we are likely heading – the training is simply not good enough. The skills that students are going to need to be competitive — technology, computational data analytics, finance, informatics, economics, accounting, human computer interaction, supply chain mgmt, etc. are in limited supply (particularly the technology and high end data analytics). To make our students competitive (hopefully thereby restore the Return on Investment associated with the JD) will require legal education to move away fromits significant liberal arts / humanities bent and look more like polytechnic research and teaching operation – or what I have called in other related work “THE MIT SCHOOL OF LAW“

It occurred to me, as I read this article, that we could get rid of the essential problem of training through use of the microchip into a human host. Also Sprach Zarathustra… Lawyerborg 2.0 was born.

Muttley Dastardly LLP will be revealing Lawyerborg 2.0 in just seven days. That is all. Strength & Profits.

Notes for Editors

1. Dr Strangelove’s name is pronounced Strangle – ove.

2. Muttley Dastardly LLP are a ‘plurality of Partners’ – this is why we “take on legal services’ rather than ‘takes on legal services’.

Hat Tip to @Old_Holborn for the link to this pic. I have seen it before – but it continues to make me laugh. Monday has not been brilliant – managed to sprain my ankle after slipping on icy slush. I may have a large glass tonight!

4. Commentary on the Assange extradition appeal in the UK Supreme Court after two days of argument before the Justices

5. Barristers facing financial problems because of government inefficiency

Our guests tonight are resident panelist Carl Gardner, Professor Gary Slapper Director of New York University in London and former ‘left wing’ Tory MP Jerry Hayes, a practising barrister specialising in the more serious criminal cases.

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